Leading through landscaping

As part of the Summer Fire Safety Campaign, six brigades around Victoria have set an example in their communities by landscaping around their stations to reduce the impact of bushfire.

Glenlyon, Doreen, Macclesfield, Wahring, Hamilton and Drouin West are the brigades invloved, and have been looking at everything from the types of plants used, to the layout and design of the garden area itself.

The gardens are a great way to get the whole community together, with brigades teaming up with other local groups and organisations to make these gardens come to life. They also make way for a range of community engagement events including planting, information and garden open days.

“These gardens are a great way of demonstrating landscaping for bushfire, and an extremely important idea for people living in areas at risk,” said Owen Gooding, Acting Vegetation Management Team Leader at CFA. “They are also are coming from a trusted source within the community via these brigades, meaning people can feel reassured about the advice they are receiving” said Owen.

Construction of these gardens is set to continue over the summer, and while operational duties are making it difficult for brigades to make progress, the gardens are still on track to be completed by April.

Macclesfield Fire Brigade is one of the brigades building a fire safe garden this summer. Sharon Merritt, Captain of Macclesfield says “our community live in a very rural area, and always want to know how to landscape their properties to make them safer, which is often hard for us to explain. The best part about these gardens is that they allow us to show people (rather than describe) ways they can make their properties safer. In turn that provides us with all sorts of opportunities to engage with them on a range of fire safety issues” said Sharon.

Brigades who are interested in getting involved with building their own fire smart gardens can learn more by contacting Owen Gooding, or reading more about landscaping for bushfire on CFA’s website.